‘Abner!’ she cried. ‘You don’t mean to say that Mr Williams is going to keep you on?’
‘Not he!’ said Abner. ‘There’s not more than four or five days left of the stone picking, and I can tell you I’m not all that sorry. My back’s fair broke at it! No, I’m thinking of a change. I might stay on round here a year before I find another job worth calling one. They’ve got a down on you and me, these farming chaps, them and your old mother. There’s only one thing to be done as I can see. And that’s what I’ve kept five bob back for to-night.’
‘I don’t understand, Abner,’ she said, understanding only too well.
‘Of course you don’t. Well, I’ll tell you. While I’ve been up on the hill I’ve had a good few hours for thinking. I’ve reckoned it all up square. There’s about four month as you’ll have to hang on here afore old George comes out, and you can’t keep the lot of us for four odd month on nothing. That’s clear enough, bain’t it?’
She assented.
‘So I thought like this. What’s the use of a chap of my sort, that’s learned a trade and all, and can pick up good money at it, going round cadging work from a lot of beggars that don’t mean to give it me? I’ve had a bellyful of farmers’ promises, I have, and I tell you straight!’
Again she said: ‘Yes . . .’
‘And so this is how I see it. The only thing left for me when I’ve finished along with old Williams is to take a turn down Swansea way.’
‘Swansea?’ she cried.
‘That’s it. I looked it up Sunday in the time-table on Llandwlas station, and asked about the fare. You go down through Builth and Brecon and Neath, and five bob’ll do it. There’s plenty of work going in the Western Valleys, they say, and good money and all. You can pick up two pound ten a week, without killing yourself either. They say lodging’s dear, but I reckon I can send you a clear pound easy: postal orders you can change at Mainstone and nobody know where they come from. I ought to have done it before. I know that. But now it looks like as if there’s nothing else.’